Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (60 page)

Simultaneously, Kenneth Swezey wrote a flurry of letters to every notable he could think of, requesting a birthday greeting. Accolades poured in (many quoted throughout this text) from E. F. Alexanderson, B. A. Behrend, W. H. Bragg, Lee De Forest, Gano Dunn, Jack Hammond, A. E. Kennelly, Arthur Korn, Oliver Lodge, Robert Millikan, D. McFarlan Moore, Valdemar Poulsen, Charles F. Scott, Georg Graf von Arco, H. H. Westinghouse, and Albert Einstein. VIPs who wrote back to decline included Guglielmo Marconi and Michael Pupin.
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By October, Thomas Alva Edison was dead; the lights in the city were dimmed in honor of the great man’s passing. Perhaps it was the death of his nemesis or the new round of adulation, or Tesla’s advanced age that prompted him to alter his style of avoiding publicity. Whatever the reason, from 1931 on the inventor made it an annual practice on his birthday to invite the press to his flat and announce his latest discoveries. With the talent of a mystery writer, the electrician stretched out the secrets of his various creations, revealing just a little more each year.

By 1935, on his seventy-ninth birthday, Tesla, although exceedingly gaunt, was still exuberant and expected to live past 110. His mind ever evolving, the sorcerer utilized this occasion to lay out in considerable detail the various particulars of a number of his more exotic creations. With movie cameras rolling and the inventor “treating the press, about 30 in
number, to a gourmet’s luncheon…Mr. Tesla sat at the head of the table.” Eating little more than bread and warm milk, which he heated up in a chafing dish at the table, the wizard talked while the reporters “feasted.”
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Inventor, 81, Talks of Key to
Interstellar Transmission

& Tube to Produce Radium Copiously and Cheaply

Reports of discoveries by which it will be possible to communicate with the planets and to produce radium in unlimited quantities for $1 a pound were announced by Dr. Nikola Tesla yesterday on his 81st birthday at which he was honored with high orders from the Yugoslav and Czechoslovak Governments…

“I am expecting to put before the Institute of France an accurate description of the devices with data and calculations and claim the Pierre Guzman prize of 100,000 francs for means of communication with other worlds, feeling perfectly sure that it will be awarded to me. The money, of course, is a trifling consideration, but for the great historical honor of being the first to achieve this miracle I would be almost willing to give my life.

“I am just as sure that the prize will be awarded to me as if I already had it in my pocket. They have got to do it. It means it will be possible to convey several thousand units of horsepower to other planets, regardless of the distance. This discovery of mine will be remembered when everything else I have done, is covered with dust.”
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In discussing this invention, one runs into murky waters, for it appears that Tesla tied the concept of the radium-producing tube to the interplanetary communicator. These, however, may be two unrelated creations. Another problem was that the inventor was also discussing at this time the idea of capturing cosmic rays that travel at velocities fifty times greater than that of light. If this invention utilized cosmic rays, it would imply that Tesla planned to transcend the speed of light and communicate with other stars.

In reading the text carefully, it appears that Tesla does not mention other stars but, rather, the planets, which are relatively close to the earth; furthermore, he does not really discuss communicating with extraterrestrials so much as transmitting energy. It is known that as early as 1918, while working with Coleman Czito’s son, Julian, the inventor was bouncing laserlike pulses off the moon and testing some type of “scope.”
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Therefore, it is possible that he was working on more than one device to send energy into outer space.

Verification for Tesla that there existed particles that traveled faster than the speed of light were purportedly discovered in the late 1890s when he invented a device to capture radiant energy. The machine, patented on November 5, 1901, comprised, in essence, an insulated plate, resembling a fly swatter, made out of “the best quality of mica as dielectric.” This was attached to a condenser. Stemming from his work with radiant energy, X rays, and Lenard tubes, the device could also capture what he called cosmic rays.
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I made some progress in solving the mystery until in 1899 I obtained mathematical and experimental proofs that the sun and other heavenly bodies similarly conditioned emit rays of great energy which consist of inconceivably small particles animated by velocities vastly exceeding that of light. So great is the penetrative power of these rays that they can traverse thousands of miles of solid matter with but slight diminution of velocity. In passing through space, which is filled with cosmic dust, they generate a secondary radiation of constant intensity, day or night, and pouring upon the earth equally from all directions.
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Since Victor Hess’s discovery in 1911 and Robert Millikan’s confirmation, there have been many scientists who have measured cosmic rays. We now know that emitted uncharged elementary particles known as neutrinos possess the penetrative powers suggested by Tesla, but no researcher, to my knowledge, has discovered rays that transcend the speed of light. This supposed finding of Tesla also violated relativity.

Tesla was insistent that such particles did exist; he saw them as a source which could be converted into electrical power. During the summer of 1932 he told Jack O’Neill that he had “harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device…The attractive features of the cosmic rays is their constancy. They shower down on us through the whole 24 hours, and if a plant is developed to use their power, it will not require devices for storing energy, as would be necessary with devices using wind, tide or sunlight.” When pressed for more details, Tesla revealed that he would tell O’Neill “in a general way [their modus operandi…] The cosmic rays ionize the air, setting free many charges—ions and electrons. These charges are captured in a condenser which is made to discharge through the circuit of the motor.” Tesla also told O’Neill that he “had hopes of building such a motor on a large scale.”
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As the years rolled on, it became a challenge for reporters to wrestle more details about each invention from the wizened prestidigitator, since Tesla
continued to maintain his perpetual reticence about revealing particulars. Concerning the cosmic-ray accumulator, the reporters were able collectively to pry from the inventor the following: “My power generator will be of the simplest kind—just a big mass of steel, copper and aluminum, comprising a stationary and rotating part, peculiarly assembled…Such a source of power obtainable everywhere will solve many problems with which the human race is confronted…[The] machinery for harnessing it would last more than 5,000 years.”
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Cosmic rays, he asserted, are produced by the force of “electrostatic repulsion”; they consist of powerfully charged positive particles which come to us from the sun and other suns in the universe. He determined, “after experimentation,” that the sun is charged “with an electric potential of approximately 215,000,000,000 volts.”
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Owing to its immense charge, the sun imparts to minute positively electrified particles prodigious velocities which are governed only by the ratio between the quantity of free electricity carried by the particles and their mass, some attaining a speed exceeding fifty times that of light…

At great altitudes, the intensity of the rays is more than 10,000% greater than at sea level…The energy of the cosmic radiations impinging upon the earth from all sides is stupendous, such that if all of it were converted into heat the globe quickly would be melted and volatilized…Rising air currents…partially neutralize [their intensity]…Those who are still doubting that our sun emits powerful cosmic rays evidently overlook that the solar disk, in whatever position it may be in the heavens, cuts off the radiations from beyond, replacing them by its own.
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Coupled with his view that all bodies in the universe obtain their energy from external sources, and possibly influenced by Walter Russell, an artist, philosopher, and longtime friend of Tesla’s who hypothesized that the periodic table of elements was constructed in a hierarchical spiral of octaves, Tesla was “led to the inescapable conclusion that such bodies as the sun are taking on mass much more rapidly than they are dissipating it by the dissipation of energy in heat and light.”
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Similarly, radioactive decay was not caused by the disintegration of the nucleus of the atom; rather, it was a “secondary effect of external rays and two-fold—one part coming from the energy stored, the other from that continuously supplied.”
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In other words, radioactive material was, to Tesla, apparently a kind of conduit for the ever-present primary substance “Akasa,” which was being
absorbed
in such a way as to cause the emission of the radioactive material.

These Tesla offerings would appear as evidence of a great mind gone astray, for the various discoveries and suggestions inherent in Tesla’s theory violate not only such accepted theories as relativity and quantum physics but also, on the surface, common sense. The idea that the inventor could construct a simple device made up basically of a receiving plate and a condenser to provide electricity to run motors from cosmic rays harks the reader back to the inane days of the Keely motor and the obtuse concepts of perpetual motion and free energy. Yet underneath the veneer of the theory is an exciting notion that the sun is somehow absorbing energy from the universe and that there does exist some form of it which transcends the limiting factor of the speed of light. Called by other researchers tachyons (i.e., particles that travel faster than the speed of light) and linked to other such concepts as black holes, worm holes, string theory nonlocality, the implicate order, hyperspace, gravitons, and Mach’s principle, Tesla’s theories, when viewed within the matrix of the bizarre new physics, may not be so far-out.

Another of Tesla’s discoveries involved the transmission of mechanical energy to distant places. By strategically placing one of his mechanical oscillators on, for example, solid bedrock, a mechanical impulse could be sent into the ground to accomplish “at least four practical possibilities. It would give the world a new means of unfailing communication; it would provide a new safe means for guiding ships at sea into port; furnish a kind of divining rod for locating ore deposits…; and finally, it would provide scientists with a means for laying bare the physical conditions of the earth.”
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The essential principle behind this invention is, of course, used today in sonar for ships and by geophysicists in studying the interior of the earth, mapping fault lines, studying the core, and so on.

Tesla, at 78, Bares New ‘Death-Beam’

Dr. Tesla…has perfected a method and apparatus…which will send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 250 miles from a defending nation’s border and will cause armies of millions to drop dead in their tracks.
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Tesla’s discovery of a death ray stems all the way back to his work in the early 1890s with his creation of a button lamp that could bounce electrons off of a central filament made of almost any substance (e.g., carbon, diamonds, zirconia, rubies) onto the interior of a self-reflective bulb and then bounce back to the source. This device would not only produce an extraordinarily brilliant light, it could also “vaporize” the button. As stated previously, it was only a short step from this machine to
the invention of the ruby laser. For instance, if there was a scratch or imperfection in the coating of the glass, the energy would stream out through this opening in laserlike fashion.

In the late 1890s, Tesla was bombarding targets with X rays at distances in excess of forty feet, and by 1915 he had announced in the
New York Times
a type of electronic defensive shield which today corresponds to what has been called SDI, or the Strategic Defense Initiative.

During World War I, another Teslarian, Harry Grindell-Mathews, was provided with 25,000 pounds by the British government for the creation of a searchlight beam which he said could control aircraft. A wireless electrician and veteran of the British army, wounded at the turn of the century during the Boer War, Grindell-Mathews eventually refined this invention and changed it into a “diabolical ray.” This new electronic beam, he said, could not only destroy zeppelins and airplanes, but also immobilize marching armies and nautical fleets. Although he would not divulge the specifics of his creation, he made no secret of his admiration for Tesla, whose technologies had “inspired” its groundwork.

In July 1924, Grindell-Mathews traveled to America to see an eye specialist. He probably met with Hugo Gernsback at that time and might also have visited Tesla. Staying at the Hotel Vanderbilt, the British inventor was interviewed by a number of the local dailies. “Let me recall to you the air attacks on London during the [world] war. Searchlights picked up the German raiders and illuminated them while guns fired, hitting some but more often missing them. But suppose instead of a searchlight you direct my ray? So soon as it touches the plane this bursts into flame and crashes to the earth.”
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Grindell-Mathews was also convinced that the Germans had such a ray. They were using a high-frequency current of 200 kilowatts, which as of yet they were “unable to control.”

Working with the French government in Lyons and performing successful tests before members of the British War Office, Grindell-Mathews instituted destructive effects at distances of sixty feet but was hoping to extend the force to a radius of six or seven miles. Asked for specifics, he said that his device utilized two beams, one as a carrier ray and the other as the “destructive current.” The first beam would constitute a low frequency and would be projected through a lens; the second, of a higher frequency, would increase conductivity so that destructive power would be more easily transmitted. The motor of an airplane, for instance, could be the “contact point” at which the paralyzing ray would do its
handiwork. He admitted, however, that if the object were grounded, it would be protected against such a force.
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